Thursday, July 05, 2007

Last night I went with a friend who is visiting from Hong Kong (who also happens to be an extreme Opera fan and knitter), to go see Opera Australia's production of The Barber of Seville. Even if you aren't all that into operas, if you watched a lot of Bugs Bunny cartoons, you would recognise a lot of the music by Rossini.

The set design was quirky as was some of the costuming. However, I thought this fit with the comedic aspect of the opera very well. It would have been better if that idiotic couple sitting in front of us, came up for air and stopped pashing long enough for me to enjoy what I had paid for.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

On Sunday, Celia and I went to the craft fair which was held in Darling Harbour. Celia offered to drive and I offered free parking (one of the perks of working where I do, is free weekend parking in the city). There were a few more knitting vendors at this fair than the Stitches and Craft fair which I went to earlier this year (luckily I got free tickets to that one, since it was sooooo not worth it).

I was really tempted by Ecoyarns and Prestige Yarns. Although I'm not really on a yarn diet, I have decided not to buy single balls (how many true single skein projects are out there - really??) and I didn't really want to be extravagant and buy 10 balls of everything!! I did end up picking these little beauties up though:

After, we had lunch at Wagamamas which was not too bad. Sometimes, this place is a bit of a hit or miss.

Monday, July 02, 2007

With the boring scarf knitting, I felt like making something "pretty". I saw on Pamela's blog, her candle flame shawl and was quite inspired to start my own. I can't believe how quickly it has knitted up. I just made this with Cleckheaton Country 8 ply. I wasn't brave enough to make it in a 2 ply yarn.

Okay, I'm seriously going to try to finish some projects before starting new ones - after this one of course!!

I'm on annual leave at the moment. Half of it was to be with my father when he went into Royal Prince Alfred hospital for day surgery to get this massive pterygium removed. Needless to say, this was an excellent time to get some knitting done. But I needed something which required no thinking as I was constantly called to help translate. So what could be more boring than a scarf? I promised that I'd make one for Raymond ages ago and had bought some Moda Vera Brilliant to make this. But I've been putting it off due to the mind-numbing-ness of knitting a scarf. I added some cables to make it a little bit more interesting.

I drove my dad back home because I knew that he didn't want to stay in Sydney for his recovery. There was a bit of flooding in low-land parts of Goulburn. Luckily, my parent's property is up on a slope, but the road into their property is prone to flooding.

The road into my parent's property.

It's not a lake - it's actually the neighbour's property. Luckily there were no sheep about that day.

Ginger_nut whom I met once at a Rubi and Lana SnB gives an honest account of depression and how knitting played a part in helping her get through it. You can read about it here. Whilst I personally have not experienced depression first hand, I do have a few people who is very close to me who suffers from it and to be there when they are down is something which is difficult for everyone involved. For someone who is sitting on the sidelines, sometimes I don't know if just being there is enough or what I should say to make things better. But at least I know.